No security for vehicles at Tambaram station: commuters

R. Srikanth

CHENNAI, FEBRUARY 08, 2019 00:00 IST



Unsecure zone:In the absence of a contractor, commuters are faced with the risk of theft when they park their vehicles.B. Velankanni Raj

Thousands of two-wheelers are left unguarded

Thousands of commuters at the Tambaram railway station have been parking their vehicles with a prayer that it would not be stolen from the parking yard.

The Tambaram railway station is one of the busiest stations in the city and witnesses a footfall of more than one lakh a day. People from several residential localities near Tambaram take the suburban trains for commute.

Thousands of commuters bring their two-wheelers and park them in the station. However, in the absence of a contractor to take care of the vehicles at the parking yard, it has caused concern among them about the safety of their vehicles. Also, the commuters face hardships in retrieving the vehicles as there is no regulation.

S. Purushothaman, a resident of Selaiyur, said nine high-end bikes were stolen last month and despite complaining to the railway authorities, no action was taken.

A senior official of the Chennai division of Southern Railway said a tender calling for a contractor was recently advertised for manning the parking yard spread over 5,700 sq.m. But no contractor was willing to apply, citing high cost.

Panneerselvam to present budget today

SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

CHENNAI, FEBRUARY 08, 2019 00:00 IST



The Business Advisory Committee of the House will finalise the schedule and duration of the budget session.File Photo

Opposition expected to raise several important issues during the session

Amidst expectations of populist announcements by the ruling AIADMK government ahead of the Lok Sabha polls this summer and fears of rising financial crunch, Deputy Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam (also holding the Finance portfolio) is scheduled to present the State Budget for 2019-20 in the Assembly on Friday.

The speech of the Finance Minister is expected to go on for about two hours.

The Pongal gift of Rs. 1,000 for a ration card announced during the last Assembly session in January and the huge amount of funds spent on Cyclone Gaja relief operations might be the largest parts of expenditure, which is expected to reflect in the budget.

The budget session may also see the Opposition raise the Kodanad estate heist-cum-murder case, legal developments in the closure of Sterlite Copper plant, shortage of drinking water in various places across the State and the temporarily withdrawn strike by the Joint Action Council of Tamil Nadu Teachers’ Organisations and Government Employees' Organisations (JACTTO-GEO) among others. On Friday, the Business Advisory Committee of the House would discuss and finalise the schedule and duration of the budget session. After a debate on the budget speech of the Deputy CM for a few days, Mr. Panneerselvam would give his reply to the debate in the House on the last day of the session.

Not notified

As on date, 21 seats in the House are vacant including the seats earlier held by 18 disqualified MLAs, the ones held by deceased legislators M. Karunanidhi and A.K. Bose and the seat held by former Minister P. Balakrishna Reddy [vacancy not notified] following his conviction in a criminal case.

As on date, 21 seats in the House are vacant including the seats earlier held by 18 disqualified MLAs

Amazon brings back offers, fast deliveries

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Bengaluru:  08.02.2019

After a week of operational disruptions, discounts and fast deliveries are making a comeback for users across Amazon India as top sellers like Cloudtail, Appario and Amazon Retail returned on the platform on Thursday.

Amazon has restructured its stake in holding companies of both Cloudtail and Appario Retail to be compliant with updated norms. Infosys co-founder N R Narayana Murthy’s investment firm Catamaran has increased its stake in Prione Business Service, the holding company for Cloudtail, to 76% from 51%. Similarly, the Ashok Patni family office will also hike stake in Appario parent Frontizo Business Service to 76%.

The US-based retailer is quickly filling up products that were not available on the platform since the new FDI rules kicked in on February 1, with Cloudtail alone adding 3,00,000 products in 12 hours after returning, according to Marketpulse, which tracks seller data.

Amazon is not planning to change the board structure of either Prione or Frontizo, where several company executives, including India head Amit Agarwal, are directors, according to sources briefed on the matter. While Amazon India has 4 lakh sellers on the platform, Appario and Cloudtail together move at least 50% of daily volumes, according to estimates.

Flipkart, too, has held talks with large offline distributors to work closely with them to ensure adequate listing on its marketplace and faster deliveries. Both Amazon and the Flipkart group (including Myntra and Jabong) are clocking daily shipments of 6-7 lakhs each. Amazon is still awaiting clarity on whether retail chain Shoppers Stop — where it holds a 5% stake — can start selling again, according to sources briefed on the matter.

While sales were hit by the rules effective February 1, both Amazon and Flipkart are now expected to bring back normalcy to their daily operations in the coming days. Several other products like Amazon devices are now estimated to be delivered within a day or two from the estimate of 36-40 days hours after the policy was implemented.

The range of discounting has also gone up on products across categories. The large sellers are part of what is called the Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) programme, which ensures adequate inventory and faster shipping, once an order is placed on the platform.

“It was expected that Amazon would take four to six weeks before it can get back to a regular scale of dayto-day business after the new FDI clarifications were effective from February. With Cloudtail and Appario back on Amazon, it would definitely help the company to cut the turnaround time by at least two weeks. However, a clearer picture would emerge in the next few days once things stabilise,” said Satish Meena, senior forecast analyst at Forrester.

The new policy puts a series of curbs on how both Amazon India and Flipkart operate — restricting discounts, no ownership in sellers on the marketplace platform and disallowing exclusive product launches — forcing them to restructure operations and take a hit on sales. As reported by TOI on Monday, a new set of sellers like Sigma Online and Meera-Enterprises have also come on Amazon to cover private labels, smartphones and grocery products.

WB has highest number of child marriages now

TIMES NEWS NETWORK
08.02.2019

If you thought Bimaru states topped in child marriages, think again. West Bengal now has the highest incidence of girls aged between15 and19 years being married off, far ahead of states like Rajasthan that one traditionally associated with child brides.

However, the findings of the National Family Health Survey-4 (NFHS-4), conducted in 2015-16, show a steady decline across states, barring a marginal increase in two states – Himachal Pradesh and Manipur. The national average is now 11.9% At the time NFHS-3 was conducted in 2005-06, Bihar topped in child marriages, with a prevalence as high as 47.8%; Jharkhand was at number 2 with 44.7% and Rajasthan at number 3 with 40.4%. Bengal came in fourth with 34%.

But in the 10 years since then, some of the Bimaru states — Bihar, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh — managed to reduce the incidence of child marriage by over 20 percentage points. In the same period, Bengal managed only an 8.4 percentage point reduction.

District-level analysis using NFHS-4 reveals that Murshibad (39.9%) in Bengal shows the highest prevalence of child marriage amongst 15-19-year-olds, followed by Gandhinagar

(39.3%) in Gujarat and Bhilwara (36.4%) in Rajasthan. However, Bihar has the maximum number of districts with high prevalence

(20), followed by Bengal (14) and Jharkhand (11).

Not surprisingly, child marriage is far more prevalent in rural areas — for rural areas, it is 14.1% on an average, while it is 6.9% in urban India. It is also directly linked to income — the more educated and well-off the girl’s family is, the less likely it is to marry the child off.

The highest prevalence of child marriage is reported amongst Scheduled Tribe girls (15%) followed by Scheduled Castes (13%). However, amongst the top 10 states with highest prevalence of child marriage, it cuts across caste groups. For instance, in Maharashtra, 38% of child brides — the highest percentage — belonged to forward castes.

CBI asks Kolkata police chief to appear on Feb 9 in Shillong

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

New Delhi:08.02.2019

The CBI has summoned Kolkata police commissioner Rajeev Kumar to appear for questioning on February 9 in Shillong.

The Supreme Court had directed Kumar to appear before the CBI while restricting the agency from taking any coercive action.

CBI sources said they would grill Kumar on the documents, pen drives, hard drives and statements of various people which were not provided by the West Bengal SIT, headed by him before the probe was transferred to the central agency.

The agency has claimed that the SIT deliberately hid or destroyed crucial evidence in the multi-crore Saradha and Rose Valley scams, in which several Trinamool Congress leaders are under the scanner.

The agency on Thursday attached 10 officers from its Delhi, Bhopal and Lucknow units to its Kolkata office till February 20 to provide additional manpower during questioning of some high-profile suspects, including Kumar.

A team of superintendent of police Jagroop S Gusinha from its special unit in New Delhi accompanied by additional SP V M Mittal, Surendra Kumar Malik, Chander Deep, DSPs Atul Hajela, Alok Kumar Sahi and P K Srivastava, inspectors Hari Shankar Chand, Ritesh Danhi and Surajit Das will camp in Kolkata, an official order said.

It said these officers will be temporarily attached to CBI, EO-IV, Kolkata. They have been asked to reach Kolkata by Friday and will be stationed there tentatively up to February 20.

Always go by the law: Top court tells CBI officer

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

New Delhi:08.02.2019

Giving a piece of advice to young government officers to always go by the law and not blindly follow the instructions of senior officers and political bosses, the Supreme Court told a CBI officer on Thursday that “the law is your only master”.

After being slammed by the court for transferring its officer supervising the shelter home rape cases of Bihar, the CBI filed an affidavit within an hour through superintendent of police Devender Singh, who is part of the probe team and was present in court.

Finding that the affidavit was not filed by the competent authority as the officer was of SP rank and it should have been filed by a senior officer, a bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna asked him on whose instruction he had filed the affidavit.

The officer replied that it was done on the instruction of former interim CBI chief M Nageswara Rao who is at present working as additional director in the agency.

The bench advised the officer to be cautious while filing an affidavit in court. “Never ever file an affidavit on anyone’s order without personal satisfaction. The law is your only master, not politicians and bureaucrats. Always keep it in mind,” the court said.

Setting an example, IAS officer to spend just ₹18K for son’s wedding

Umamaheswara.Rao@timesgroup.com

Visakhapatnam:  08.02.2019

At a time when the weddings have turned into ostentatious affairs, it may be a surprise for many to hear that an IAS officer is going to spend just ₹18,000 on his son’s marriage in Visakhapatnam on February 10.

This is not the first time for the Visakhapatnam metropolitan region development authority (VMRDA) metropolitan commissioner P Basanth Kumar to break the stereotype. He conducted his daughter’s wedding in Radha Soami Satsang Sabha, Dayalbagh with just ₹16,100 in September 2017. In fact, Basanth Kumar himself set an example to the society way back in 1988 when his marriage expenditure was only ₹2,345.

Speaking to TOI, Basanth Kumar said that his in-laws kept him waiting for a few weeks when he proposed the ‘wedding with a difference’ in 1988. “Finally, they agreed to my proposal of registered marriage under the Special Marriage Act. Only 25 guests were invited for my wedding and it cost me nearly ₹2,345,” he said. Kumar said that his son’s wedding would be a collaborative effort of his colleagues, members of Radha Soami Satsang Sabha and others, which otherwise would not have been possible with just ₹18,000.

“Being a follower of Radha Soami Satsang, I cannot spend more than ₹18,000 on my son’s marriage. The expenditure limit is stipulated based on the income group of a person,” said Kumar. When asked how he could pull off the wedding ceremony with just ₹18,000, Kumar said that the flowers and vegetables for the marriage will be supplied by the farms located in Dayalbagh Nagar in Visakhapatnam and they will be paid accordingly.

“In the run up to the marriage, we will conduct a Friday satsang on February 8. Only ₹10 should be spent on each guest. Fortunately, the 200 families located in the Dayalbagh Nagar prepared the snacks for just ₹7. Governor ESL Narasimhan will participate in the satsang and give his blessings to the couple,” he said.

Full report on www.toi.in